


Five Minutes and a Moon Would Suffice

by HarpiaHarpyja



Series: How Soon Unaccountable [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Lumberjack Kylo Ren, Actual Force Nerd Kylo Ren, Actual Force Nerd Rey of Jakku, Canon Compliant, Everyone Keeps Sweating a Lot, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Nerds Get Philosophical, Gen, Inconsequential Moons of Unremarkable Planets, Mutual Pining, Nature Walks for Science, Or Maybe She Does, Post TLJ, Rey Definitely Snored in Kylo's Ear, Rey Doesn't Like Kylo's Jokes, Reylo - Freeform, Thank Your Dead Dad for Your Knowledge of Smuggler Hideouts, The Force Ships It and Will Not Be Dissuaded, The Knights of Ren Get the Band Back Together (Maybe)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 12:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13787541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarpiaHarpyja/pseuds/HarpiaHarpyja
Summary: As part of a plan to refine Rey's recent achievement in controlling the Force bond, Kylo Ren makes a clandestine trip to a little-known moon in a bid for discretion. They soon find that opening it is the easy part. Closing it is another matter.





	Five Minutes and a Moon Would Suffice

**Author's Note:**

> These fools went nearly two damn weeks without trying to open the bond, even though Rey has proven they can. Which accidentally coincides with how long it took me to post this. 
> 
> Thanks to all who have left kudos and comments on this series—each one is truly appreciated! I'm aiming to have two more stories after this, so I hope this is another enjoyable installment of these sad nerds being sad nerds.

Ordinarily Kylo Ren would have found the opportunity to test any novel aspect of his connection with Rey difficult to resist. He liked to assess things, take them apart and look inside them, determine how to perfect them. Or he had once. It was a superiority thing; an exercise of control and intellectual mettle. There was true and natural curiosity there, too, purely for its own sake, something from another life that had for a long time lacked much occasion for use until recently. 

As things stood, Rey had already beaten him to the latest iteration of the task. She’d managed to intentionally open the connection, all but calling him to her side at will. But she had yet to perfect the method. That fact alone should have driven him to outstrip her and refine it before she had the chance.

Yet something of the night she came to him about their dream stayed with and rattled Kylo just enough that he remained reluctant to try it himself in the time after, despite confidence in his abilities. Evidently, she was similarly hesitant, even after issuing the hint of a challenge before they parted. He was not certain whether he found this to be in his favor or merely a letdown, but he was frequently conscious of the lack. And still he put off trying.

Until he made a decision that, as he saw it, forced his hand and made it more imperative than ever that he achieve as much mastery as possible over the whims of the bond that existed between them.

Four transmissions sent, all received; three returned, so far. Kylo sensed that the fourth would return in time, with similar tidings. The Knights of Ren, what remained of them, would soon convene after years of Order-sanctioned missions that made the assemblage of their full power a rare and short-lived occurrence. That era was over. If Kylo was to remake the First Order—if he must do so without Rey by his side—he was going to begin that work with the only other force whose loyalty he did not question. 

But his trust in even his knights only extended so far. It did not include the chance of accidentally revealing anything of his unfathomable bond with a fledgling Jedi from the Jakku desert.

When he finally mustered the desire to attempt to summon up the connection as Rey had, it was thus born of self-imposed necessity as much as simmering impatience. The Force had proven to be in no rush to reinstate the random nature of these events, and as such he felt an urge to be more furtive about it than usual. If he could control it, Kylo reasoned, he should also control the environment and circumstances around it. He didn’t _have_ to be taken by surprise while having a wound tended to, or while meditating, or while trying to eat. 

His quarters, though, for all that they were avoided by most who did not have explicit orders to seek him there, seemed inadequate. It was seared into his nature to be mistrustful of the concept of privacy.

So instead, he took a more drastic turn. He picked an inconsequential moon orbiting an unremarkable planet in a distant system and made it his prerogative as Supreme Leader to perform an undisclosed surveying task there. It would take him the day, and he would return for the evening briefing. That was all the officers under him needed to know. If anyone saw fit to question it, they would be sure to regret it. As far as he was concerned, none of what transpired today could be said to ever have happened.

Charissia was actually very pleasant, as obscure moons went. It boasted a temperate climate over much of its surface, which was dotted with large lakes, expansive green plains, and forests of dark-leafed trees. Even better, it was not known to have any sentient inhabitants. Historically, it was favored by smugglers, but its existence was rare knowledge even among those sorts. When Kylo landed on the shore of one of the larger lakes, not far from the edge of a dense copse, the sun was low but likely to remain visible for several hours yet. He would have ample time for his task. 

Not seeing any reason to worry about his rather conspicuous vessel being spotted by anyone but a herd of unfamiliar grazing animals in an adjacent field, Kylo left the Silencer and set off into the trees with his saber and a bag of provisions. It didn’t take him very long to find a spot that felt right. Shadier than most in an already shadowy hollow, it gave the impression of being truly secluded in a way that robbed it even of birdsong and the faint breeze he had previously noticed. With such a vacuum of distraction, Kylo forwent the usual seated posture and stood instead, eyes closed, his back a few inches from a tree and his arms hanging loosely at his side.

He reached out and found Rey easily, which was a gratifying start. That vital pulse was unmistakable, just beyond his mind’s grasp. It was a little alarming to think how close she seemed to have been even before he tried to seek her. He could feel the fabric of material reality begin to breach, to thin out and almost tremble, like something on the other side was striving to emerge and meet him. At the last moment, he reined in, pulled back until all that remained was the impression of her. 

That shifting of purpose caused a noticeable depletion of energy and a peculiar wringing behind his sternum that Kylo had not expected. It did not concern him. Part of the aim of this experiment was control, to determine by individual will when the connection was allowed to open and close. It would be self-defeating if he allowed it to sweep him along once he found what he was aiming for, tempting as it was to simply let the Force show Rey to him.

He probed tentatively with his mind instead, letting some instinct lead. _Is now a bad time_?

Kylo could tell that Rey heard him, and in a less direct way he could tell that she’d been startled, and not just by him. An answer came. It was muddled, however, like hearing something spoken through a window.

_Yes. Bad time. Done soon._

Her reply was cryptic but clear enough, and Kylo was beginning to retreat back into himself when he felt a sharp blow to his left arm that sent him stumbling hard into the tree behind him. It was so unexpected that he became aware of his body and surroundings again far too abruptly, arriving with only a profound flare of temper and a reflexive move to ignite his saber. But there was nothing around him to attack or defend against. Confused and still on guard, he stalked between the surrounding trees, eyed the partially obscured shoreline, looked to the canopy above, and, finding nothing amiss, vented his frustration by running the blade straight through the hulking dried out husk of a dead tree, then twice more in long, furious swipes. The tree collapsed crookedly, chunks of fungi and dessicated bark littering the already leaf-strewn ground.

He spent the next several minutes wandering farther into the thicket, mostly without any aim but to distract himself while he waited. He hated waiting and did not do it well. The fact that he did so with such willingness for Rey was a weakness, he knew, but one he continued to ignore. 

Just as he ignored any inclinations to think overmuch about how she had kissed him the last time. How he’d wanted the experience to last, wanted to feel her, touch her, taste her. How he’d wanted even more for his mind to stop screaming at him not to trust what was happening. How implausibly easy it had been to fall asleep beside her. In the moment he had doubted his ability and willingness to do so, but then she’d dropped off so quickly—within minutes she was unmistakably snoring—with her back to his. The next thing he remembered was waking up alone an hour later, the bond having blinked closed at some point as they slept. His relief had been equaled only by his disappointment. Whatever sleep he’d managed the remainder of the night was troubled by doubts and self-recrimination until the entire thing seemed a fabrication of his psyche.

Kylo was about to turn back and head toward the lake in search of something else to occupy his time when he felt the connection slip open.

“Good morning. Or whatever it is for you,” Rey said lightly. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to bother.” 

She was in the shade of a thickly flowered tree, or should have been. The light where she was didn’t match his, so instead she glowed eerily in the shadows under the dipping branches. The quarterstaff she held served as something to balance her as she bent one leg up and back, held it behind her with her free hand, then switched to stretch the other. Her face was high-colored and sweaty. At the top of her left bicep was an oblong smudge of blue-purple discoloration. 

“I might say the same of you.” Kylo touched a finger to his own arm, where he’d felt the brunt of the strike that he’d begun to think he must have hallucinated, and found the area still tender if he pressed hard enough. He now suspected that when he removed his jacket later, he would find a bruise not unlike the one forming on Rey’s skin. “How’s the arm?”

She lifted and rotated it, then shrugged. “Sore. Wouldn’t be if you hadn’t distracted me in the middle of practice. Finn hasn’t held back since he realized I didn’t need him to, but I’m not usually dealing with voices in my head.” 

Her breath appeared in thin puffs of steam when she spoke, and she didn’t seem to care if her mention of the traitor rankled him. It did, but he ignored that, too.

“You’ll be happy to know I received comeuppance in kind, then.”

Rey’s nose wrinkled as she rubbed at a smear of dirt on her cheek. “You felt it?”

“Either that or a sentient tree saw fit to attack me.”

Her eyes narrowed.

Kylo sighed. “Yes, I felt it.”

It was clear that by now neither of them found the phenomenon strange, because Rey processed what he said with a curious look and moved along without further comment. “What do you want, anyway?”

That was a good question. It occurred to him that he had no real reason for contacting her now beyond the fact that it had been a long time since they last spoke and he had become restless for an excuse to try it himself. His other reason seemed flimsy now. 

“I don’t know. Nothing. To see you.” That was far too candid. He attempted to recover, eschewing vulnerability. “To try opening this the way you did.”

Rey nodded slowly, and he thought she actually turned a little pinker, though she spread her hands in a gesture that suggested she was unbothered. 

“Well, here I am.” Her hands fell and she looked around herself, seeing none of the lush greenery that curtained her from his perspective. “You did something different. I could hear you in my head but not see you, and then it was like you’d gone completely.”

“I considered that it might be preferable if I didn’t just appear the way you did in my bed last time,” he said, feeling oddly inclined to goad her. “If you had announced yourself, I could have had time to—what was it? Put on a cowl, or something?”

“I didn’t know what I was doing yet. And from my point of view you were in my bed. Not that it even matters, because neither of us was actually in the other’s anything.” She sounded exasperated and a touch flustered. “Anyway, it worked, didn’t it? Though clearly you’ve figured it out a bit more.”

“Just applied some finesse.”

Rey snorted and turned, walked a little way toward him until she was no longer under the tree. They noticed at the same time that some of its shed foliage had landed on her—and stuck. Blooms such a dark red they were almost black and long, spiky curls of green leaves were scattered over her hair and shoulders. She picked one off and looked at it, stunned, then hurriedly brushed the rest away.

“Where are you?” she asked, still staring at the ground around her feet. Wherever she was, the leaves had evidently decided to stay.

Kylo reached forward and picked a leaf she had missed from her hair, then let it flutter down to join the rest. “Outdoors. In a forest. It’s very nice here.” He remained intentionally vague, knowing it would irk her even if it was an obvious necessity. 

“Not for long, if the First Order’s taken an interest in whatever planet it’s on,” she said. Her voice was tight. She wanted to say more but was choosing not to, and on this occasion he was grateful for it. 

“This has nothing to do with the First Order. I’m here on my own.”

“You say that like they don’t have ways of knowing where you are.”

Of course that was true. Despite whatever care he took in overriding his Silencer’s flight data recorder and disabling the navigational logs, there was still a slim possibility he was being tracked even here. Hux feared him, for now, but he also mistrusted and hated him and was remarkably conniving and well-connected. Such a man would want to know what the self-styled Supreme Leader was doing when not committed to actions known to be explicitly in the First Order’s service and favor. Just another reason for Kylo to relish the imminent return of his own cadre.

“You’re right, they may.” Kylo shook his head dismissively. “The fact remains, it’s not an area of interest for any but my own agenda. I came here to be alone.”

“You mean you came there to contact me.”

He realized the lack of logic in what he’d said and let chastened silence serve as his reply.

Rey was unsatisfied with this, even if it was as good as agreement, and he couldn’t see why until she said, “You’re acting strange.”

“Am I? I’m flattered you think you know enough to make that judgment.”

“Oh, stop it.” Her eyes were flinty. “I think I do. And you _are_. Making . . . jokes, if that’s what those were. Acting like you’ve got license to just traipse around the galaxy when you want assurance that you won’t be caught doing this.”

He didn’t like what she was saying, but only because it was, once again, generally on the nose. “I do have license to traipse around the galaxy, actually. As for ensuring this isn’t discovered—that should be a given. It’s for your protection as much as mine to take precautions if I can.”

Her eyes widened in outrage.

“Hah! My protection? You think I don’t worry about this? How it might seem to the Resistance to find out that I’ve been having secret _chats_ , for months, with the Supreme Leader of the First Order—enjoying it, sometimes, and just decided it was something they didn’t need to know?” As Rey spoke, it was as if the enormity of the crime was revealing itself to her anew. Her words rushed in a thick continuous cloud of breath, and she paused to allow her thoughts to catch up. “There’s no way for me to explain it all that doesn’t destroy my credibility. I’ve kept it too long. But, I’m handling it. Worry about yourself, but don’t claim anything you’re doing is for my benefit.”

That actually stung, for the first time in a while. Not the way it had on the _Supremacy_ , but something like it; the throwing in his face of something he’d offered her. But he was thinking more clearly now than he had been then. Though it made him angry, he was able to temper it. 

“I don’t care what the Resistance has to do with it or whether they ever know.” This wasn’t strictly true. He wondered, distantly, what Leia would make of the peculiar link he and Rey had formed, or that had been formed for them. But that was something he needed to grapple with for himself. “I’m talking about the First Order. How there are people who would gladly use this against me, through you. If they knew what you are. What we did.”

“Well, that’s a choice you’ve made, isn’t it?” Her agitation was fading, but far from placated. “To place that blame on me and take up your mantle.”

“Yes. My choice.” He ground his teeth. “A badly considered one.”

The statement surprised her, judging by the twitch of her brow and the way she was briefly at a loss for a reply. Perhaps she was thinking that now might be a moment of weakness in him. Perhaps she was wondering if what he’d said hinted at a possibility he might turn with her now, might be convinced not to go back to the dreadnought, might take whatever transport had gotten him to this place and use it to go to her instead. He thought she must be, because her eyes sharpened and it looked as if she was arguing with herself whether she ought to dare to hope and try again.

She didn’t. He was glad. It might have worked. 

Instead, she took a few steps away from him, spiking the ground sharply with the butt of her staff to let off steam. “Will you explain what you did to reach me the way you did today? Or are you just going to continue being smug? I’ll figure it out anyway. It can’t be that much of a stretch beyond what I did in the first place. But I don’t mind the help.”

The unsaid was understood: they had decided they would try to do this together. Rey was willing to stand by that if he was. 

“It wasn’t difficult,” Kylo said after a beat. He was thankful that she was treading them out of dangerous waters and back to bear on the original point. “I entered a meditative state, reached out. Until I sensed you. I could feel the connection beginning to open, so I . . . brought myself out of that state by degrees. You were still there, but it was as if there was a wall between us. Something made me think you might still hear me if I called. Or, hm. Not called—thought at you.”

“Right.” Rey was listening, unperturbed by his imprecision. It was hard to find words for things that already eluded definition and had such little basis in the tangible. But he knew she understood that he wasn’t simply prevaricating, which made it easy not to feel unworthy for stumbling through the recollection. “That sounds a bit like what I’ve done, though it’s less gradual. I guess I charge ahead when I feel it begin to work, I don’t know.”

Kylo would not have found that remotely surprising, but didn’t say so, because he thought the difference was more likely attributable to something other than Rey’s headstrong nature. He remembered the way he had begun to feel almost as soon as he reached out for her, the sensation of being swept away in a current and propelled forward. It had cost actual energy—mental, emotional, and physical alike—to resist that and bend some element of it to his will so that the connection didn’t simply open at the first provocation.

“No, I don’t think that’s it. It may be that you simply aren’t resisting it. We’re already connected by the Force. The potential for that connection to open or close is established regardless, so the truly difficult part is covered. If all you or I did was tap into it, as you’ve done, no real further effort is required to open it.” 

“Right. We’re just finding what’s already there and catching a free ride. Probably why neither of us is dead yet from this,” Rey cut in, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “I’d been thinking about that. You said so once, how the effort ought to be too much. But there’s no effort at all. Or hadn’t been ‘til now that we’ve been tampering.”

He tipped his head and was unable to keep himself from smiling slightly at the macabre slant of her observation. It was one he agreed with. “I prefer to think of it as modulating rather than tampering.”

“Finesse,” she said with a hint of irony.

He looked at her seriously. “When you initiated it, last time and just now, were you tired afterward? Weaker?”

She considered, weighing her physical condition in both cases. “No, not really. The first time I still felt half asleep. Today I’d just been doing some fairly rigorous physical activity, but I’m not worse off for doing this just after.”

“So, the more control you or I try to exercise in this—the more effort we expend doing that—the more energy it takes.”

“Flying into a gale versus letting yourself be borne along by it,” Rey said, likely thinking of some conditions on Jakku. It was easy to imagine tearing sandstorms and the havoc they would wreak on speeder travel. “Is that what happened to you today?”

“To an extent.” Perhaps that was in part to blame for how easily he had been knocked back by a blow taken only vicariously. 

“Could be. It makes sense. I certainly wasn’t fighting any of it when I realized it was working.” She spoke slowly. “I just let the Force . . . fill me, and do what was necessary. It’s likely to be the same for closing it at will, I’d bet. Either you wait for the Force to end it, or you wind up trying to harness something that doesn’t want to be.”

Kylo paused, then clasped his hands behind his back. There wasn’t much to be gained by simply talking about it. He wanted to apply conjecture to action. “So . . . which of us wants to try it first?”

She was on the verge of volunteering despite his abrupt suggestion, but hesitated. “I’ve got some time. No one will think it’s odd if I’m late to mess after drills, but they might if I come back exhausted. So if this is something that might sap one or both of us after too long, we should make an effort to conserve energy.”

“Right.”

“We’ll alternate?”

Kylo nodded. “Good. A turn each, and evaluate from there.”

“I’ll close it now, you reopen it, then we switch. Assuming it even works.” 

But Rey was grinning, not nearly as skeptical as her words suggested. Seeing her smile like that, a little excited, untainted by regret or sadness or disdain, was strange. It was not lost on him that the two of them were becoming remarkably good at these hastily assembled experiments, even if half of them started in argument. 

“It’ll work,” he said.

“Shh.” 

Apparently she really wasn’t going to wait, because already she was sitting on the ground, her staff laying across her folded legs and her eyes softly shut. Kylo thought of what she had said that night, about thinking she would have to truly want him gone if she was to succeed in closing the connection. If that was a condition, he somewhat doubted she would manage right now—or maybe he was growing too assured of his value to her.

He held his silence, watching impassively as she sat as if listening for something. Her expression was calm and distant. Every few seconds a cloud of breath puffed from between her slightly parted lips. His neck grew warm at unwelcome thoughts of their fervor against his, their gentleness on his skin, and how it seemed unlikely he would be gifted that feeling again. Mutely, he looked away and retreated to observe from a safer distance.

More than a minute passed. And then, utterly without preamble, Rey was gone. It was as anticlimactic as ever, but something about the fact that he’d been waiting for it made it startling. She’d done her part. Now it was his turn. They hadn’t done this in succession before. Soon enough Kylo would know if doing so would change the outcome, or the ease with which it was achieved.

He sank down onto the grass and stilled himself. It was easier now that he had a more palpable reason and was accustomed to the mild sounds of the forest. They drifted away as he let himself feel out the Force, and then, gradually, what—who—he was seeking within it. As before, he didn’t have to seek very long or very hard, and this time he didn’t have any reason to draw back out. Even so, he exercised some degree of restraint, resisting the way the Force pulled and pushed him toward Rey just enough to slow the opening of the connection until she stood before him. Again he felt that slight loss of an energy so generally a part of him that he couldn’t pinpoint its source. It was not a good feeling at all, but not one that threatened imminent demise, either.

“Welcome back.” He looked at Rey to try to discern if she appeared tired or ill, but she moved so purposefully to his side that he didn’t have much time to form an impression. 

“Did I go somewhere?” she asked sardonically. “Show off.”

“Pardon?”

“That . . . thing you did. Delayed it. It was like watching a ghost become solid.” Her mouth quirked as she sat down next to him. “More unsettling than just appearing outright, somehow.”

Well, she wasn’t acting tired or ill. He stretched his legs out in front of him. “You’ll get your turn.” 

“Sure. Give me a minute though. Closing it feels strange.”

Now that Rey was so close to him, Kylo could see a faint sheen of sweat on her face that had not been there before she went, and a tightness around her mouth suggestive of nausea. 

“Strange how?”

Rey paused, drew her mouth into an even tighter line, and leaned her elbows on her knees. “It actually reminded me of how it felt trying to keep you out of my head when you took me on Takodana. The same sort of effort I had to make to push you out, and to get into yours. It's unpleasant.”

“Ah.” Being reminded of the circumstances of their meeting was unexpected. Kylo found he felt regret, and shame, both for the act itself and how it had been turned on him.

“I was angry and frightened then, though. Now I just feel like I need a nap. Which is exactly what I was hoping to avoid.” She yawned, then scrubbed a hand vigorously over her face. “After this next go I’m going to have to stop. It’s too early here for me to go through the day like this.”

Momentarily forgetting the situation, Kylo caught himself about to tell her to lie down and sleep a while right here if she needed it. But wherever she was, it presumably lacked the soft forest floor he was seeing. She would be missed, eventually. And she didn’t shirk duty.

“It’s my turn to close it anyway,” he said instead. “We might as well call it done after that, until next time.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll open it back up. That’s the easy part anyway.” She clearly thought he needed convincing. “I want to know how it feels to you.”

Kylo nodded and began. At first it felt like the beginning of any other meditative session. But the moment he began trying to close Rey or himself off, he was met with resistance. Rey was right. It did feel like trying to fight something off, but this time that something was of the Force’s own making, and it was not so easily subdued as human will. Kylo strained with mind and feeling, pouring every ounce of intention he could muster into the single task of shutting the connection away. Something gave way with a soul-deep shudder, that aching pressure between his lungs again.

He opened his eyes. It had worked. He was alone, and he felt dazed and overheated, neither of which made the success feel like cause for celebration. The shade of the trees cooled the air enough that his discomfort began to fade as his breathing slowed, but he was still ruffled when Rey reappeared, looking not much better. She took him in for a few moments, and it was clear she didn’t need to ask to know that his experience had been akin to hers.

“Why is this so much kriffing harder than opening it?” she grumbled, pacing before and around him a few times. It wasn’t truly a question. She was complaining, because she knew the answer, which she declared in the same tone. “I know, I know. Because the Force wants it like this.”

“Like this?”

She crouched beside him, then dropped onto her haunches. “Us, together.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“We’re not.”

“You keep saying that, but are we ever _not_ together anymore, really?” Rey said. “When I brought myself back, it was like you were already right there the moment I reached out to the Force. How many people can have a conversation like this entire systems away from one another?”

Kylo was silent. He had an answer, but it was definitely not the sort she was looking for. He gave it anyway, unable to restrain his inclination to be droll. “Anyone with a transceiver, probably.”

She stared at him like she was going to object. Then she laughed. It was quiet and contained, but it made her eyes crinkle and her shoulders shake, and it was more of a reaction than he could have hoped for. His mouth curved in a sly smile.

“Yes, obviously. This is just like that,” she said as the laughter faded from her voice. Her features smoothed and became serious again. She was beginning to look less unwell, color returning to her face and her mouth softening. “Is that right though? Can it want things? The Force?”

He found himself almost uncomfortably aware, not for the first time, that Rey had no formal background in any of this. Anything she learned was gained by her own initiative or natural giftedness, even as she’d been propelled into her awakening almost unwillingly. What must that have been like, he sometimes wondered—no legacy, no expectation. The sort of nothingness that might have been enviable in some ways, had it not brought with it cruelties and harsh realities she’d had to endure at too young an age. He knew she possessed the same raw and innate potential he also did. His had been whetted into something brutal, but hers was yet unblemished by dogma or exploitation.

“I think . . .” What did he think? He had such rancor toward teachings that had failed and ruined him, Kylo was not quite sure what he actually believed anymore about the power he’d been born into. “I think it . . . seeks. Equilibrium. Stability.”

“Balance,” she said in an undertone.

“Yeah. It’s not a want in the way you or I would desire something. It’s more . . .” He shifted, uncertain of the right words.

“That it works toward its own natural order.”

That was about as good as he would have managed, so he nodded and watched some small animal scurry from one clump of brush to another. 

Rey was quiet too, for a little while, then said firmly, “Five minutes. Then I’m going to get up and go. If this is still happening by then, will you help me close it? It’s bound to be easier if we both try at once.”

He remembered the strange events that had transpired as a result of the last time they did something like this in unison—the dissociated state they’d seemed to end up in, the dream that came days later and shook them both—and while he didn’t exactly want the latter, the former had not been bad. There had been peace in it, and her. And there was the obvious advantage of sharing the burden. 

“Of course.”

“Good. Thanks.” 

She sounded satisfied and scooted herself a bit nearer to him. Fine beads of moisture had settled on her skin and clothing—was she was sitting in a mist? He could see the way the skin on her arm dimpled with small goose bumps. It was difficult to tell if it was because of a chill where she was or because of their proximity, but he was glad of his long sleeves as he felt a shiver himself that had no extrinsic cause. 

“While we wait,” she said, “tell me about the place you are right now. I’ve never seen leaves like that before.”

Here, then, was something he could offer her. Something she would not turn away. Something she had asked for. Something so trivial. It wasn't a galaxy, but it would suffice.


End file.
